> How much did this cost? The 22 game machines (including monitors, cables, and peripherals) cost about $75,000 in total. The house overall was a 7-digit number.
I needed like a minute to process this. These folks are privileged as hell. I understand that folks on HN are typically affluent but this is rich rich level.
There's growing popular sentiment that being a millionaire/billionaire at all is morally repugnant and antisocial behavior that deserves to be shunned, if not punished.
You don't. I'd guess most of the developers don't. For example, my near 20 years of experience nets me a salary FAANG interns would find offensive. But in this part of the world it's "raise a family comfortably" money. In the end, it all depends on cost of living. And accepting you are not building 20 seat Lan party setup in your spare wing of the house.
I recognised Kenton from his profile pic, he’s definitely doing well but also is a terrific principal engineer, and still somehow finds the time to answer questions on discord, I’ve had chats with him about DOs even though my spend on the cf platform is ridiculously low
Yes, this line made me angry. Privileged people from first world countries like these will increase their products prices for growth & more profit saying it's very cheap anyways.
Meanwhile common people in other countries can't even think about buying a proper gaming PC now. I bought a pre owned gpu, it stopped working after 5 months and I lost my savings.
I see and also had some immediate reaction when somebody mentions a $75k figure and says “cheap”.
But I think the point really here is that computers are cheap in relation to other items you can buy. Not cheap as in “small part of my wealth”, but as in “about equally much money as something that is not as impressive (as a computer)”.
And I really agree. I think it’s amazing that I can get eg a computer I find fast for the price of a kind of bad sofa. 2nd hand MacBook M1 vs dinner for 4 at a nice restaurant.
> the original LAN house was not very big: 1400 sqft. This made for a pretty awesome bachelor pad, but would have been a bit cramped for raising a family.
They are rich. But then again plenty of people have multi-million dollar homes. I am sure there are some in your city. In some cities a million dollar home is becoming a normal price. Many people have hobbies and pastimes that they spend many tens of thousands of dollars on. Think about boats. Or how much some hotels and resorts, full of people, cost. These people are, again, rich, but so are millions of other people who don't tell you the details on the internet.
I think they are more lucky than privileged. Multiple IPO stock options, both well educated and high paying jobs and shared interests. They seem to have hit right timings multiple times. Things compound.
I think they are smart enough to take advantage of things. Hard work or not doesn’t matter. For example, assessing that their home in California is worth way more than they make out of it and seeking out a cheaper place to convert that “luck” into profit is definitely their smarts and not privilege.
Something like 1 person in 15 in the US is a millionaire, and a million dollar house + some LAN gear should be well within reach of a millionaire. Obviously they're a comfortable distance from poor but we're not talking unattainable wealth on display here.
That's... that's all it's ever meant? Since when had wealthy/successful not afforded privilege?
I think the point is that posts like this are becoming a sour taste for a greater ratio of humans because of the increase ratio of disparity in global wealth/success.
I don't begrudge someone their enjoyment and livelihoods and I'm a fan of DDR and lan parties like every good nerd.
But please don't pretend or be ignorant of the idea that there are many more people in the world now that can both see this and likely never attain it despite "hard work" or "good investments".
> But please don't pretend or be ignorant of the idea that there are many more people in the world now that can both see this and likely never attain it despite "hard work" or "good investments".
Of course - I am one of them - but I can still appreciate the project.
Edit: To add, I would probably refer to this purely as hard work, good investments AND lots of good luck and timing, as opposed to privilege.
Regarding investments, I can't believe how often people fail to understand that to make money by investing, you have to have money to invest in the first place! Getting rich by investing is a way to turn a small fortune into a bigger one. It's not a way to make a fortune in the first place.
They both came from wealthy families. Of course they worked hard and applied themselves fully, without ever having money worries to distract them. But let's not perpetuate that cliché that it's purely down to "hard work", like the trope from rich people's self-marketing autobiographies. "It's all down to my hard work, nothing to do with my rich family, really, nobody works as hard as me"! People all over the world work very very hard, some much harder than these people, and don't have the privilege of wealthy families to fall back on.
To clarify: correcting and clarifying isn't begrudging or complaining. Same for those of us who know we won't attain it because we don't have that privilege. They enjoy it, good luck to them.
I'm not usually one to comment on other people's home decor but this house looks like living inside a generic office building. The board game room looks like somewhere you'd have a conference call. I'm somewhat fascinated. I can't imagine choosing to make your living space look like this willingly. And yet they have! So they must enjoy it and it must feel like home to them.
>The board game room looks like somewhere you'd have a conference call.
The author literally labeled that room the "Upstairs Office".
The rest of the house (kitchen, family room, etc) that's not dedicated to LAN computers looks like a normal Euro/Scandinavian type of clean minimalism aesthetic which a lot of people like.
My home currently has a lot of "traditional" style furniture and decorations hanging on the walls which some might call "warm & cozy". But others would disagree and think of it as "grandma's house" and as I've aged, I tend to agree. I'd like to eventually dial it back and redo the interior to be more minimalistic but I have other higher priorities than remodeling the house.
It's funny because there's a comment about the cabinetry being expensive despite it just being a 'bunch of wood' but actually if they opted for the right wood panels instead of the standard veneered chipboard used in a lot of offices, it probably would have made the whole setup look a lot more homely. They probably do need a bit of colour and some items on the wall to break it up too.
I guess I'm boring because I really like it :-/ Maybe some cozier lighting/plants could be nice in the LAN/party spaces. I think the bones are pretty good. Just needs some finishing touches.
Reminds me a lot of big tech campus interior decoration. A lot of greys, neutral colors, very little color or personality.
Pretty much what you'd expect from techies that never really thought too hard about their living space beyond functionality.
I mean, I'm the same, so no judgement, but I did hire an interior decorator for my own place. Definitely worth the money and my house has all kinds of funky fun stuff and colors going on (on top of being 130 years old and super wonky everywhere, ha ha).
Agreed. It's clear that the owners have considerable financial resources, but seemingly no one thought to hire an interior designer/architect to consider how the place looks or functions outside of the gaming aspect. If that's their style, then more power to them; it just seems incredibly generic and like wasted potential.
I used to work for a firm that did custom homes for wealthy clients. Even when we paired them up with designers some of them just preferred a very plain appearance.
That said, I thought the games room with rows of hide-away PCs looked like a call centre or at best a 90s internet cafe.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
We had LAN parties like that once upon a time when we had a space that supported it.
Friends of friends would show up. Not everyone knew everyone else and this was fine. Cold drinks of every sort were available at the carry-out next door, and some would bring things to share. Donations were had for pizza or burgers (sometimes nowhere near enough donations, and sometimes more than plenty; it averaged OK). The social aspects of it really worked OK. Cleanup wasn't bad.
The biggest problem was that the first ~couple of hours were spent getting all of the PCs connected, updated, and working properly-enough.
By providing gaming stations, this dude has the big problem completely solved: All of these machines can be known to be on the same page when things start.
(The second-largest problem -- the smell -- is a different issue entirely. It usually ramped up pretty well by the time the first problem was approaching being solved.)
I can't speak to your situation, but I know that in mine the main blocker for a LAN party with adult friends wouldn't be a lack of interest nor lack of friends (though I don't have a giant pool, and can't even count 18 people I'd be able to even suggest such a thing to) it would be lack of time due to other life responsibilities, that tend to increase as we get older.
My solution has been to play boardgames remote using BoardgameArena[0].
I usually have 2x turn based games going with two separate groups along with a dedicated chat channel, and then do 1-2 live evening sessions over video call with other groups. But all setup to be flexible and made to fit with the constraints of adult life, so sometimes we play and sometimes we reschedule.
This is why it is perfect to have two brothers and a brother-in-law. We can at least get the four of us together to do something. Pretty sure we could manage 8-12 with friends, but none of our houses would be big enough.
I'm more or less in your boat, but I also know several folks who play D&D or warhammer every weekend in big groups. It's kind of a choices-one-makes and where-one-lives deal, I think
> We have efficient heat pumps and solar panels, but it's still a disturbing amount of energy usage and something I'm trying to debug. Perhaps we have too many windows letting in too much sunlight...
External window blinds work wonders with that - your AC doesn't have to work hard to get the heat out of the greenhouse you inadvertently built if you avoid the heat getting in in the first place. But yeah, these might be more widespread over here in Europe than in the US...
Window blinds for the worst hours (can be angled so the sun doesn't enter but the view outside is retained), and solar reflective foil for the normal days.
I'm still looking for the good, transparent matte coat for my exterior walls, but I've already cut some of the cooling power use via passive means.
> The cabinetry is just a bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges. Whereas the computers in total contain more than a trillion transistors, each of which had to be carefully etched in the right spot connected correctly to all the others. A trillion! That's 1,000,000,000,000!
Really cool house, but describing the cabinets as "bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges" shows little understanding of what goes into building something like that.
It's hard to tell from the pics if the cabinets are made of sheet goods with veneer or solid boards glued into panels. But at the very least, the trees need to be grown, they need to be managed, they need to be felled, sent to processing for sheet goods, dried and milled for solid wood. Even then you've got to get everything cut to size and square, then build the cabinets with all the specific sizes, then finish them, transport to site and install everything and the trim.
It's two ends of the manufacturing scale. For transistors, you've got mass production at an impossibly difficult level of accuracy for a human and for cabinets you've got single production (at the install level) at very difficult level for a human.
But again, very, very cool house. I especially like the cat doors but not nearly half as much as I imagine the cat does.
> Really cool house, but describing the cabinets as "bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges" shows little understanding of what goes into building something like that.
I mean, the whole place looks like a cookie cutter office block. The lack of appreciation and want for good design goes far deeper.
I really love the idea of having all the PCs in some place far away from where I, the human am sitting, but I don’t know how to do that. HDMI and USB cables can’t work over more than a few tens of feet can they? Or maybe these are special shielded cables, or sent down shielded cat6 cabling? Would love to have even more details on how to do this.
Also, since saying goodbye to my dad in hospital last year, whenever I hear about people enjoying time with their own fathers I feel really happy. I would have loved to build a house with my dad!
It’s been on HN a few times and I’ve always enjoyed looking at it. I think it looks great, fantastic setup, cat walks and doors. LAN parties with your friends for 30 years is awesome! Now that is hard to replicate even if one uses the house design as inspiration!
My buddies and I sometimes reminisce fondly about those times (we are now spread across the globe) but fortunately we all still chat every time there’s an Arsenal game - an automatic Schelling point no matter where in the world you are.
None of us plays video games much any more so there’s no loss in it but it feels pleasantly nostalgic.
The basement is awesome, but I would not feel cozy and welcome there. From the pictures it feels like any serverroom I've ever been into. Unwanted tips: Put some plants in there, some color, some wall-to-wall gaming art prints on the closet-doors and floors. <3
MTV used to have this show called Cribs where celebrities showed their house around and cars and everything. Basically bragging about their rich life. I have the same feeling opening this site. Maybe we need an MTV Cribs SV edition.
I've been thinking about running a "mystery retro LAN party". Dig into a big cardboard box and pull out an old gaming laptop. You get what you get. Then go try to get top frag!
They are lucky, coming (at least Kenton) from a good family with money and, I surely believe, parents that pushed him in the right direction, helping him to fully develop his natural talents. And you definitely needed raw brain power (which is a natural gift) to join Google in 2005.
This makes me really miss LAN parties. What an absolute gem of early PC culture that is sadly mostly forgotten? A reasonable replacement is phone gaming parties and I'm not kidding - it's really fun! We did Among Us phone LAN party recently and it was a blast.
While I am a bit jealous of the ability to buy a in-house gaming cafe setup for $75.000 there is little in here that is particularely noteworthy.
Everyone that has $75k can buy hardware? I guess the Netboot setup might be interesting?
Giving me MTV Cribs vibes where people pretend to be interested in a particular feature of a house while in reality it's just a 45min boast of how rich they are, broadcast in a socially acceptable way.
The funnest part of this whole thing is the manual litter box, literally the worst part of having a cat, and it’s been solved through technology (litter robots). Everything in the house has tech, except the one thing that has you picking up actual shit every day.
"solved through technology" is an optimistic take on modern litter robots, in my experience ... I saw those as someone who has owned like 3 of them. Sometimes I realise I'm paying 500 bucks for an incredibly unreliable machine that gets slowly more smeared in poop over time instead of spending 30 seconds of my day to scoop some poop and feel quite silly.
I really wonder where people find the time. Like two people, probably working stressful jobs, kids and still find the time to design and build something like this and probably also use it. Fascinating.
Someone once told me “you’ll make time for the things you care about” and I’m fortunate to have heard it since I have found it to be true for myself. The unfortunate truth appears to me that I care about Hacker News and other social media…
I remember this! Its crazy because the comments section on that thread seems more curious about the setup (with albiet one long thread about home costs). Massive contrast to this one.
Just came here to say, everything about this is incredible. The house itself, the site, the FAQs but most of all, the attention that went into the cat's needs.
11/10.
We want(ed) to do something similar (re the cats needs) when renovating our house but just could never decide!
I have a "simple" PetSafe door which has a cat-chip controlled relay to open it, and our cat can just come and go whenever she wants, and she does her needs outside in our garden. Simple and effective and she lives the best of both worlds.
Especially the cat entrances / infra to allow them access throughout the home and while human doors are closed. Would love to see a cat POV via an action cam of them running through the home.
At the former apartment, my office/work area had an opening to the living area high on the wall that might've been for a window, or something. My cat spent a lot of time staring at that opening. Not just the opening itself, but he'd work his way backwards, along some exposed AC ducting (it was a loft with 20' ceilings), trying to plot a route from the floor over the ducting to the hole. If we'd had a high enough shelf in the living area he would have gotten in.
What exactly is the problem with UniFi? I’ve always thought Ubiquiti gear is generally pretty good. At least a better option than e.g. Cisco for the home/small business customer.
"This house has normal parts, too!" got me triggered :)
Yeah our "normal" house : swimming pool (heated by servers?), panoramic view, guest room bigger than my whole house, roof deck, 30-mile view...
Definitely an accomplished architect, there are a lot of fine construction details in these photos. So much that it makes the IT/low voltage installation look like a hack job.
I disagree. This is the good part of capitalism. In an ideal world, a custom-designed housing unit should be achievable by anyone in the upper middle class. The combined property tax rate in Austin is around 1.8%-2.5% (according to https://lrgrealty.com/lrg-blog/property-taxes-in-austin-tx/), which is decently high and supports the community. ChatGPT says that they paid $52,142 in property taxes for 2025 on an assessed value of $3M.
In my opinion, the only immoral part of this is the “million dollars in profit” on the house in Palo Alto that he left which the author himself called out as ridiculous. This unearned increment is thanks to Palo Alto’s exclusionary zoning and Proposition 13’s low property taxes (around 1.25% at acquisition, but much lower for long-term investors). ChatGPT says that the author paid $11k/year and the new owner now pays $28k/year for the Palo Alto house now assessed at $2.3M.
I needed like a minute to process this. These folks are privileged as hell. I understand that folks on HN are typically affluent but this is rich rich level.
So 75k is both objectively massive, and not.
I won't argue "privilege" but it seems like both people in the couple have been working for a long time and took equity bets that paid off.
Another way to look at it, in many tech jobs 75k could be a bonus (additional to salary an equity)
Sometimes I wonder if I work in the same tech industry as some of the other folks around here, but then, I guess I haven’t worked FAANG.
My understanding most Tier 1 employers are paying $700k-$1.5m usd per year in TC.
$75k is less than his tax bill.
Also the home is in Texas (I think). So lower cost square footage.
Tech does have a crazy variance in salary for people who are doing, broadly at least, the same jobs. I don’t see any hate here. Just surprise.
If you’re in the Bay, maybe, otherwise it’s $35-50k depending on how new
"Why did you move to Austin? [...] needed a bigger house, but we really could not afford to buy (much less build) anything bigger in Palo Alto."
So there are a few more levels of richness above
> I actually find it funny how cheap computers are.
Meanwhile common people in other countries can't even think about buying a proper gaming PC now. I bought a pre owned gpu, it stopped working after 5 months and I lost my savings.
But I think the point really here is that computers are cheap in relation to other items you can buy. Not cheap as in “small part of my wealth”, but as in “about equally much money as something that is not as impressive (as a computer)”.
And I really agree. I think it’s amazing that I can get eg a computer I find fast for the price of a kind of bad sofa. 2nd hand MacBook M1 vs dinner for 4 at a nice restaurant.
Computers are cheap!
Be angry instead at companies who won't even comply with the most ridiculously basic laws. They are the ones causing all those problems.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/naacp-...
That’s 130 m^2. A fucking bachelor pad.
Debatable
Something like 1 person in 15 in the US is a millionaire, and a million dollar house + some LAN gear should be well within reach of a millionaire. Obviously they're a comfortable distance from poor but we're not talking unattainable wealth on display here.
- He's been in big (huge) tech since 2005
- She is an angel investor
- Moved to Austin
...
Does privileged just mean wealthy/successful now?
I think the point is that posts like this are becoming a sour taste for a greater ratio of humans because of the increase ratio of disparity in global wealth/success.
I don't begrudge someone their enjoyment and livelihoods and I'm a fan of DDR and lan parties like every good nerd.
But please don't pretend or be ignorant of the idea that there are many more people in the world now that can both see this and likely never attain it despite "hard work" or "good investments".
Of course - I am one of them - but I can still appreciate the project.
Edit: To add, I would probably refer to this purely as hard work, good investments AND lots of good luck and timing, as opposed to privilege.
They both came from wealthy families. Of course they worked hard and applied themselves fully, without ever having money worries to distract them. But let's not perpetuate that cliché that it's purely down to "hard work", like the trope from rich people's self-marketing autobiographies. "It's all down to my hard work, nothing to do with my rich family, really, nobody works as hard as me"! People all over the world work very very hard, some much harder than these people, and don't have the privilege of wealthy families to fall back on.
To clarify: correcting and clarifying isn't begrudging or complaining. Same for those of us who know we won't attain it because we don't have that privilege. They enjoy it, good luck to them.
The author literally labeled that room the "Upstairs Office".
The rest of the house (kitchen, family room, etc) that's not dedicated to LAN computers looks like a normal Euro/Scandinavian type of clean minimalism aesthetic which a lot of people like.
My home currently has a lot of "traditional" style furniture and decorations hanging on the walls which some might call "warm & cozy". But others would disagree and think of it as "grandma's house" and as I've aged, I tend to agree. I'd like to eventually dial it back and redo the interior to be more minimalistic but I have other higher priorities than remodeling the house.
Saying that, I'd live there in a heartbeat.
Pretty much what you'd expect from techies that never really thought too hard about their living space beyond functionality.
I mean, I'm the same, so no judgement, but I did hire an interior decorator for my own place. Definitely worth the money and my house has all kinds of funky fun stuff and colors going on (on top of being 130 years old and super wonky everywhere, ha ha).
It’s likely just his preference. My wife and I also rather like a relatively “IKEA” aesthetic so I think it’s just preference.
That said, I thought the games room with rows of hide-away PCs looked like a call centre or at best a 90s internet cafe.
I mean, the American Express office looks like a track stop or mall you will find along the highway.
Friends of friends would show up. Not everyone knew everyone else and this was fine. Cold drinks of every sort were available at the carry-out next door, and some would bring things to share. Donations were had for pizza or burgers (sometimes nowhere near enough donations, and sometimes more than plenty; it averaged OK). The social aspects of it really worked OK. Cleanup wasn't bad.
The biggest problem was that the first ~couple of hours were spent getting all of the PCs connected, updated, and working properly-enough.
By providing gaming stations, this dude has the big problem completely solved: All of these machines can be known to be on the same page when things start.
(The second-largest problem -- the smell -- is a different issue entirely. It usually ramped up pretty well by the time the first problem was approaching being solved.)
nerd life seems to get lonelier the older you get.
My solution has been to play boardgames remote using BoardgameArena[0].
I usually have 2x turn based games going with two separate groups along with a dedicated chat channel, and then do 1-2 live evening sessions over video call with other groups. But all setup to be flexible and made to fit with the constraints of adult life, so sometimes we play and sometimes we reschedule.
[0]: https://boardgamearena.com
This is difficult to arrange at short notice :)
Nerds always thinks they're special :) This is the same for most people in the world.
External window blinds work wonders with that - your AC doesn't have to work hard to get the heat out of the greenhouse you inadvertently built if you avoid the heat getting in in the first place. But yeah, these might be more widespread over here in Europe than in the US...
Root cause analysis complete.
I'm curious about this. Do you mean a layer of paint-like substance that makes the walls isolate better?
Really cool house, but describing the cabinets as "bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges" shows little understanding of what goes into building something like that.
It's hard to tell from the pics if the cabinets are made of sheet goods with veneer or solid boards glued into panels. But at the very least, the trees need to be grown, they need to be managed, they need to be felled, sent to processing for sheet goods, dried and milled for solid wood. Even then you've got to get everything cut to size and square, then build the cabinets with all the specific sizes, then finish them, transport to site and install everything and the trim.
It's two ends of the manufacturing scale. For transistors, you've got mass production at an impossibly difficult level of accuracy for a human and for cabinets you've got single production (at the install level) at very difficult level for a human.
But again, very, very cool house. I especially like the cat doors but not nearly half as much as I imagine the cat does.
I mean, the whole place looks like a cookie cutter office block. The lack of appreciation and want for good design goes far deeper.
Also, since saying goodbye to my dad in hospital last year, whenever I hear about people enjoying time with their own fathers I feel really happy. I would have loved to build a house with my dad!
And then of course once it's over fiber, nearly any length desired is easily achieved
[1]: https://lanparty.house/images/office-action-overhead.jpg
My buddies and I sometimes reminisce fondly about those times (we are now spread across the globe) but fortunately we all still chat every time there’s an Arsenal game - an automatic Schelling point no matter where in the world you are.
None of us plays video games much any more so there’s no loss in it but it feels pleasantly nostalgic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_Cribs
Alright.
Otherwise really cool! Enjoyed the FAQ and appreciate the courage to put this out given the types of comments one receives online (see thread).
The resumes are impressive :) didn't realize Kenton had created Cap'n Proto
Everyone that has $75k can buy hardware? I guess the Netboot setup might be interesting?
Giving me MTV Cribs vibes where people pretend to be interested in a particular feature of a house while in reality it's just a 45min boast of how rich they are, broadcast in a socially acceptable way.
Zoom out buddy
Clumping litter works surprisingly well. It's really a minor thing.
11/10.
We want(ed) to do something similar (re the cats needs) when renovating our house but just could never decide!
Especially the cat entrances / infra to allow them access throughout the home and while human doors are closed. Would love to see a cat POV via an action cam of them running through the home.
Wow. Imagine having this budget and then doing this.
In my opinion, the only immoral part of this is the “million dollars in profit” on the house in Palo Alto that he left which the author himself called out as ridiculous. This unearned increment is thanks to Palo Alto’s exclusionary zoning and Proposition 13’s low property taxes (around 1.25% at acquisition, but much lower for long-term investors). ChatGPT says that the author paid $11k/year and the new owner now pays $28k/year for the Palo Alto house now assessed at $2.3M.
Naah, even a small risk is unacceptable in such case.